There are three primary color transmission standards in use today. The 525-line, 30-frames-per-second NTSC (National Television Systems Committee) standard is used in the United States, Canada, Central America, most of South America, and Japan. The 625-line, 25-frames-per-second PAL (Phase Alternation Each Line) standard is used in England, most countries and possessions influenced by the British Commonwealth, many western European countries and China. Finally, the 625-line, 25-frames-per-second SECAM (Sequential Color With [Avec] Memory) standard is used in France, countries and possessions influenced by France, the former Soviet Bloc nations including East Germany, and other areas influenced by them. Other standards are becoming available, such as HDTV (High Definition Television). The video signal according to each standard is unique, and an ordinary television receiver designed to process a video signal of one type cannot process a video signal of another.
The most widespread medium for distributing motion pictures is the videocassette. Because of the different television industry standards used throughout the world, there are an equal number of videocassette standards. An NTSC videotape sold in the United States, for example, will not play on most videocassette players to be found in England. To a far lesser extent, motion pictures are also distributed on optical disk media. These media are for the most part analog recordings, and once again media designed to play on players of one type are incompatible with players of another.
Digitally encoded optical disks are in theory far superior for the distribution of motion pictures and other forms of presentation. Especially advantageous is the use of "compressed video," by which it is possible to digitally encode a motion picture on a disk no larger than the present-day audio CD. Especially in the case of compressed video, where there is no real-time analog video signal on a disk, it should be possible to play the same disk throughout the world--the players in any given territory will generate an analog signal of the appropriate standard from the same digitally encoded video source information. It might be thought that software providers such as the motion picture industry would welcome the advent of such a "universal" disk, but this in fact is not the case.
There is a compelling business reason for this. New motion pictures, and their follow-up consumer versions, are released in different territories at different times; often, many months may elapse, for example, between the release of a motion picture in Australia and its subsequent release in the United States. Contractual and marketing arrangements will be compromised by players, or player add-ons, which allow a carrier intended for play on television receivers of only one type to be played on television receivers of another type. In addition to the motion picture companies not being protected from unauthorized multi-standard playback of their releases, if present practices do not change, then the artistic community, and even the consumers who are responsible, will continue to object to the video degradation that results when converting from one standard to another. (High-quality conversion can be obtained today only at relatively high cost.)
Digitally encoded media facilitate the generation of high-quality video signals in conformance with all standards, and this only aggravates the problem faced by motion picture companies in their attempt to control the orderly release of new films throughout the world. Digital encoding makes it easier to generate analog video signals of all types. All players have to decode the same digital bit stream and generate an analog signal from it. Horizontal and vertical sync pulses have to be added to this analog signal, along with a frequency and phase reference for color signal encoding, with the synchronizing and reference signals being combined with the picture video signal to form what is known as a composite video waveform. It does not require too much additional circuitry to allow the same player to form composite video for all of the different standards. It thus becomes difficult to plan for orderly releases of films in different countries at different times.
Thus far it might appear that the problem pertains solely to video standards--how to control software carriers so that they play according to only a selected video standard. But the problem is more extended. It is sometimes desirable to distinguish between countries or territories that adhere to the same standard, so locking out standards, for example, will not always accomplish the broader objective. For example, for political reasons it might be desired to prevent play of a particular disk in China, but to prevent play according to the PAL standard would also preclude disk distribution in England. Thus while it is advantageous to exercise control over the video standards that are recoverable from a software carrier, it is also advantageous to exercise control over the territories in which a disk may be played.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a system and method for a software publisher to control the video standard(s) to which a video signal generated from the publisher's software carriers may conform.
It is also an object of this invention to provide a system and method for a software publisher to determine the territories in which the publisher's software carriers may be played.